Sadie(3)

It doesn’t occur to me that meeting someone on a road outside of town to buy a car for any amount of money I’m willing to pay might not be the safest thing in the world but that’s only because what I’m going to do once I have the car is even more dangerous than that.

“You could die,” I say, just to see if the clean weight of those words off my tongue will somehow shock their reality into me.

It doesn’t.

I could die.

I grab my green canvas backpack off the floor, shrug it over my shoulders and run my thumb over my bottom lip. May Beth gave me blueberries last night and I ate them for breakfast when I woke up today. I’m not sure if they’ve stained my mouth and I have a hard enough time with good first impressions as it is.

The screen door on the trailer is rusted out, sparks a whine into all our surrounding Nowhere That Matters, but if you need a visual, picture a place far, far less than suburbia and then imagine me, a few more rungs down that ladder living in a trailer rented from Fed-Me-Blueberries May Beth for as long as I’ve been alive. I live in a place that’s only good for leaving, is all that needs to be said about it, and I don’t let myself look back. Doesn’t matter if I want to, it’s just better if I don’t.

I grab my bike and ride my way out of town, briefly stopping on the green bridge over Wicker’s River where I stare down at the water and feel the dizzying pull of its raging current in my gut. I dig through my bag, pushing aside clothes, bottles of water, some potato chips and my wallet until I find my cell phone tangled up in a ball of underwear. Cheap piece of plastic; doesn’t even have a touchscreen. I throw it in the water and then I get back on my bike and ride out to Meddler’s Road, off the highway, to meet the woman who wrote the craigslist ad. Her name is Becki with an i. She’d write that, with an i, like I couldn’t see it for myself in every email she sent. She’s standing next to the boxy, midnight-black car, one hand rested on its hood and the other on her pregnant belly. Behind her, another car is parked, a little newer. A man sits at the wheel with his arm hanging out the open window and he’s tense until he sees me and then all his tension seems to melt away. It’s offensive. I’m dangerous.

You shouldn’t underestimate people, I want to call out. I have a knife.

It’s true. There’s a switchblade in my back pocket, a leftover from one of my mother’s boyfriends, Keith. Long time ago. He had the nicest voice of all of them—so soft it was almost fuzzy—but he was not a nice man.

“Lera?” Becki asks, because that’s the name I gave her. It’s my middle name. It’s easier to say than my own. Becki surprises me, the way she sounds. Like a scraped knee. Longtime smoker, I’d bet. I nod and take the cash-fatted envelope from my pocket and hold it out. Eight hundred in all. Okay, so she countered my initial offer of five but I know it’s a good deal. I’m more or less paying for the repairs they made on the body. Becki says I should get a good year out of it at least. “You sounded a lot older in your email.”

I shrug and extend my arm a little farther. Take the money, Becki, I want to say, before I ask you what you need it for. Because the man in the car does look pretty itchy; unfixed. I know that look. I’d know it anywhere, on anyone. I could see it in the dark.

Becki rubs her swollen belly and moves a little closer.

“Your mama know you’re out here?” she asks and I settle on a shrug, which seems to satisfy her until suddenly it doesn’t anymore. She frowns, looking me up and down. “No, she don’t. Why’d she let you come out here all alone to buy a car?”

It’s not a question I can shake, nod, or shrug to. I lick my lips and steel myself for the fight. I have a knife, I want to tell the thing that likes to wrap its hands around my voice.

“My m-mom’s d-d-d—”

The more I d-d-d the redder her face gets, the less she knows where to look. Not at me, not directly in my eyes. My throat feels tight, too tight, choked, and the only way I can free myself is if I stop attempting to connect the letters altogether. No matter how hard I try in front of Becki, they’ll never connect. I’m only fluent when I’m alone.

“—ead.”

The stutter’s hold loosens.

I breathe.

“Jesus,” Becki says and I know it’s not because of the inherent sadness of what I’ve just told her, it’s because of the broken way it came out of my mouth. She steps back a little because that shit is catching, you know, and if she gets it, there’s a 100 percent chance she’ll pass it on to her fetus. “Should you—I mean, can you drive?”

It’s one of the more subtle ways someone has asked me if I’m stupid, but that doesn’t make it any less maddening coming from a woman who can’t even spell the word please. I tuck the envelope back in my pocket, let that speak for me. Mattie used to say it was my stubbornness, not my stutter, that was my worst quality, but one wouldn’t exist without the other. Still. I can afford the risk of pretending Becki’s ignorance is more than I’m willing to fork over for her used-up car. She laughs a little, embarrassed. Says, “What am I talking about? Of course you can…” And again, less convincingly: “Of course you can.”

“Yeah,” I say, because not every word I speak turns itself into pieces. The vocal normalcy relaxes Becki and she quits wasting my time, shows me the car still works by bringing the engine alive. She tells me the spring on the trunk is busted and jokes she’ll let me keep the stick they use to prop it open at no extra charge.